Guide to Good Times with Halo 2 on Xbox LIVE

I have had Xbox Live since February 06, and I have to say that I am pleased with it. I have found that by doing a few things I can make the most of this pretty cool feature of the Xbox.

First of all, what I do is set my "Voice Output" to "Headset Only". What this means is that all the voices that I hear in the game only come through my "Xbox LIVE Communicator". You can do this by editing your profile's settings, or by accessing your friend's list and pressing "x". This is strategic because all voices you hear, you can hear clearly, and you can adjust the volume of the voices independant of the volume of the TV. It also works good because if anyone swears or anything, you can easily pull your headset out of the slot on the controller and eliminate them. You can just as easily mute people in-game, though this is tough, unless you are playing an Objective gametype (like CTF or Assault) you won' t have enough time to mute them if you die.

You can avoid having to mute people very easily. Just don't enter a Team playlist without a solid group of however many people are put on a team in that playlist. For example, I wouldn't enter the playlist "Team Slayer" without a group of four, or 6v6 without a group of five or six, etc. With the update to Big Team Battle, you can enter it with a group of eight and get a match nearly as fast as you do in other playlists. Before the update, the system would look for another team the same size as yours with similar ranks, now in Big Team Battle only, it just grabs people of similar ranks, regardless of whether or not their in a team like yours.

Having a party of people the same size as the teams of the playlist eliminates the major problems that sometimes are encountered in matchmaking, as you won't run into delevelers (people who lose on purpose in order to lower their rank---I know it doesn't make much sense to me either), racists, bossy people, or lone wolves on your team, unless they were in your party to begin with (they probably weren't if they are peoples' friends lists).

Now, what if your only friends who are on LIVE when you log on are busy? Well you can just enter the playlist "Rumble Pit" and pull your mic out, since Rumble Pit is a Free-for-all there's really no reason to wear a mic, unless you want to be distracted or if something hilarious happens. You won't be distracted if your Voice Output is set to "Headset Only".

If you are doing all those things there's no way you'll end up with a "griefer" player. The only time one could interact with you would be if they killed you and they feel like saying that you are bad at Halo 2.

Sidenote on People who say to every opponent they beat that the opponent is bad at Halo 2:
If you say to every opponent that you beat that they are bad at Halo 2, the message that you sending to the world is that the only people you ever are able to beat are horrible Halo 2 players. Think about this for a second... if the only people you ever are able to beat are horrible Halo 2 players, then what does that say about you? You beat them, so you think therefore they must be bad. It makes more sense to say that they are good Halo 2 players, because beating a good Halo 2 player means something. Beating a person who is bad at Halo 2 isn't that great of an accomplishment, and isn't something awarded or worth mentioning.

Now, if you run into someone who is annoying you, just mute their voice. You might get killed once while you do that, but it's worth it. If in the postgame lobby, someone starts spewing racist or lewd comments, just pull your mic out of the slot on the controller so you can't hear them, and then leave feedback. There is really no reason to entertain those people or try to argue with them. Just leave feedback.

Sidenote to people who say that feedback doesn't work:
Feedback actually does work, but only if you use it. If you aren't using the feedback system then of course it's not going to work. All the time I find that people are posting in the Bungie.net forums that they've been banned from Xbox LIVE, so feedback must be working in their cases, and there's probably many people who've been banned from LIVE who aren't posting.

In conclusion, set Voice Output to Headset/Communicator Only, enter team playlists with a team, and pull out your mic during a Rumble Pit type game or during a bad atmospheric Postgame Lobby, leave feedback.

There are a lot of people who appreciate the gift of playing with fellow gamers, and occaisonally we run into someone who abuses this gift, let's help Xbox LIVE change them so others won't have to run into them too. When multiple people leave feedback on someone, the first time they are punished, they get suspended from Xbox LIVE for a short amount of time USUALLY... if it's a larger issue or a second offense they'll get permanently suspended, so don't feel like they aren't getting a warning. A one-week suspension may be enough to make them rethink their onLIVE gaming attitude.

I leave feedback cuz it improves others’ experience. I leave feedback so it can improve the experiences of my XBL brethren... those I’ve never even met.